The Brilliant Bafflement of Wildcat
Sr. Margaret Kerry, fsp
"Our experience of the grotesque should result in
bafflement" (Wilson Yates).
Wildcat is imaginative, faith-filled, and baffling, a
genuine Flannery O'Conner come to screen. Robert Giroux, friend, and publisher
described his relationship with Flannery as "strange and trusting"
while he said her dreary chair at the University of Iowa glowed (The
Complete Stories Flannery O'Conner). Her teacher Caroline Gordon described
O'Conner's writing as "baffling the reviewers." Giroux confirmed
"They all recognized her power but missed her point."
One of the points to get to right away is Flannery’s use of descriptives
that many consider racist. DW, who keeps the weblog Becoming Flame
wrote, Flannery “writes about racism, prejudice, and white privilege in almost
every story, exposing them for what they are and showing how firmly and
pervasively and subtly they lurk in our culture. "I’m not saying don’t
take offense at it; that would miss the point." I believe she uses it to
show how offensive it is.”
I have tried to keep up with the multiplicity of film
reviews for Wildcat. O'Conner is still challenging. That "strange
and yet trusting relationship" could be the experience of many. A few
reviewers are unsure where to find hope in Flannery's novels. "People
without hope not only don't write novels," she said, if they don't have
hope they aren’t taking "long looks at anything, because they lack the
courage." At her death, Thomas Merton wrote, "I write her name with
honor for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man's fall and
his dishonor" (Everything That Rises Must Converge -
AudioEditions.com) O’Conner’s desire to be a great writer was met with an equal
conviction that her talent and ability flow solely from God.
Named after an early Flannery O'Connor short story that
confronts the certainty of suffering and explores ultimate spiritual realities Wildcat's
script is curated from Flannery's letters and Prayer Journal, the
screenwriters, Shelby Gaines, and Ethan Hawk, explore her creative process as
an act of faith. In O'Conner salvation is stripped of romanticism and
sentimentality. She describes her characters as those who "are forced out
to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves -- whether they
know very clearly what it is they act upon or not" (“Flannery O'Connor and
the Theology of the Grotesque”).
For those unfamiliar with O'Connor's Southern Gothic style,
intentionally jarring to reveal moral and spiritual numbness, this movie needs
an introduction. Her use of the grotesque confronts and accepts distortedness,
brokenness, and suppressed visions of the truth. "To be able to recognize
a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," She writes,
"It is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential
displacement that he attains some depth in literature" (O'Conner, Some
Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction). Our much-altered world
already creates in us a longing for redemption. In Parker's Back Sarah
Ruth asks Parker if he is saved. He replies that "he didn't see it was
anything in particular to save him from."
In O'Conner's thought, "The Catholic novelist believes that you
destroy your freedom by sin; the modern reader believes, I think, that you gain
it in that way" (O'Conner, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in
Southern Fiction").
R. Jared Staudt remarks "Our culture is marked by a
peculiar dichotomy…. We keep suffering and death removed from our everyday
experience: we cover it over with pharmaceuticals and drugs, remove the sick
and dying from the home, and distract ourselves from facing up to its
reality." O'Connor knew that as an
artist she needed to make her "vision apparent by shock—to the hard of
hearing you shout, and for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures"
(O'Conner, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction").
True, the work of Flannery O'Connor can be "harsh, violent, and
discomfiting." It is small relief that she uses as her art-medium the
imperfect in ordinary humans. This allows hope to shine "thick with truth,
grace and redemption" (Tod Worner, “The Mean Grace of Flannery O’Conner”).
Sometimes I locate myself in the ordinary while at other
times I am Mrs. Turpin in Revelation. I need to be hit by a book (by
Mary “full of” Grace) to come to my senses. In the struggle to hide my
imperfections the film Wildcat reawakens me to Flannery's aptitude to
pry my fingers loose from self-seeking perfection so I can acknowledge being
pursued by a great love Who does not hesitate to break down walls of resistance
to enter my well-established fortress.
Veronica A. Arntz wrote that Flannery believes there is
something within us demanding the redemptive act, which is something that man
has forgotten: “he has forgotten the price of redemption.” (“Grace and the
Grotesque: Redemption…”– Faith & Culture)
Like O'Connor's stories, Wildcat effects an
impression that prompts viewers to reflect on deeper themes of the symbolism
portrayed in the film. There is so much to pay attention to: books used in the
movie and the novels, names of characters, settings, words – especially words. This is a unique biopic. Instead of finding
the book better than the movie this film encourages you to delve deeper into
Flannery O'Connor's work which continues to resonate and challenge. When the
film's producer, Joe Goodman, first read O'Conner he realized her books would
allow him to make great films.
Maya Hawke and Laura Linney's talented acting as they switch
from Flannery and her mother, Regina, to characters in Flannery's narratives allows
the audience to plunge into a cold Lourdes bath of stories. "I'm always
irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from
reality," Flannery wrote. "It is a plunge into reality and it's very
shocking to the system” (Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional
Prose).
Someone wrote that in Flannery's novels, you do not know who
the protagonist is or who the antagonist is. She flips them so that
"everything is off balance." “Jesus thrown everything off balance” (The
Misfit). She uses distortion to reveal. The art of film is enacted here as
a peacock unfolding feathers of "flagrant, bright-hued symbols." I
still have a scene from Parker's Back etched in my mind. Inexorably this
happens while I am in chapel making my examination of consciousness. The visual
inhabits me all day challenging my view of anyone I encounter.
Flannery was resistant to the idea of a novelist as an
evangelizer. Had she met Blessed James Alberione, a pioneer for the language of
media for the gospel story and founder of the Pauline Family, he would agree
that the best told sacred stories are those of the human person exposed to
surprisingly abundant grace.
At the end of the film's premiere in Boston, there was a
Q&A with Ethan Hawke and Shelby Gaines. Ethan revealed that during the
party scene, as Flannery walked through the house feeling "far from
God" he froze frames that could represent the seven deadly sins. This is
the same scene where the host announces that she sees the Eucharist as a
symbol. "If it is just a symbol, to hell with it!" responds Flannery.
Listen carefully to the music, especially as the credits
roll. Brothers Latham and Shelby Gaines (the screenwriter) perform Shelby's
original score with homemade instruments created from found objects.
Ethan's advice to someone who asked about finding their
voice as a writer or director was you cannot find your voice until you begin
and stop worrying about what to say. Remember that what everyone wants is what
you bring to it. Flannery adds, "The great novels we get in the future are
not going to be those that the public thinks it wants, or those that critics
demand" (https://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/grotesque.html).
The novelist will write stories "that put the greatest demands on him, that
require him to operate at the maximum of his intelligence and his talents, and
to be true to the particularities of his own vocation"….They "will
have to descend far enough into himself to reach those underground springs that
give life to big work…It will be a descent through the darkness of the familiar
into a world where, like the blind man cured in the gospels, he sees men as if
they were trees, but walking" (O'Connor, "Some Aspects of the
Grotesque in Southern Fiction").
Wildcat is clarity for a baffled heart. O’Conner’s
goal is to set us on the road to wholeness forced to realize our assumptions
and surrender our expectations. The world begins to look like a place hope is
hiding where we least expect. “That which you most need will be found where you
least want to look,” said Carl Jung.[1]
This freedom is rarely experienced and “cannot be conceived simply. It is a
mystery and one which a novel [or a movie] …can only be asked to deepen”
(Flannery O’Conner, Preface to Wiseblood). As you enjoy viewing the
theologically brilliant and simultaneously baffling Wildcat get ready to
have even your virtues burned away (Cf. Revelation).
Stories in Wildcat
Comforts of Home (presented as a
movie trailer)
The Misfit (the final scene)
Life You Save May Be Your Own
Revelation
Parker’s Back
Everything That Rises Must
Converge (named for the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).
Good Country People
[1] https://medium.com/@hasanazad/that-which-we-need-the-most-will-be-found-where-we-least-want-to-look-carl-jung
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